Index > Horror movies I watched for Halloween, ranked > Related: Have there been American movies in other genres with tiny budgets that were big hits the way that some of the famous horror movies were?
Posted by Billdude (@billdude) on Nov. 2, 2026, 11:44 a.m.
Paranormal Activity is missing from that list.
Comedies:
Monty Python & The Holy Grail’s budget was a mess, you can actually watch a version of the film on the DVD that has an “Accountant’s Version” where a little white rabbit with a British pound sign on it will pop up during certain scenes and if you click your remote when it does that, it’ll show you little invoices and shit to show you how little money Gilliam and Jones had to work with.
Borat didn’t cost very much, did it?
Swingers cost $250,000.
Napoleon Dynamite cost $400,000.
The film Robert Rodriguez began his career with, El Mariachi, cost $7000. I guess it wasn’t a huge hit though.
Budgets are misreported all the time, I guess–I only recently found out that neither The Abyss nor Who Framed Roger Rabbit actually cost $70 million in 1988-89 money.